Food Lipidomics for 155 Agricultural Plant Products

Lipids exhibit functional bioactivities based on their polar and acyl chain properties; humans obtain lipids from dietary plant product intake. Therefore, the identification of different molecular species facilitates the evaluation of biological functions and nutrition levels and new phenotype-modulating lipid structures. As a rapid screening strategy, we performed untargeted lipidomics for 155 agricultural products in 58 species from 23 plant families, wherein product-specific lipid diversities were shown using computational mass spectrometry. We characterized 716 lipid species, for which the profiles revealed the National Center for Biotechnology Information-established organismal classification and unique plant tissue metabotypes. Moreover, we annotated unreported subclasses in plant lipidology; e.g., triacylglycerol estolide (TG-EST) was detected in rice seeds (Oryza sativa) and several plant species. TG-EST is known as the precursor molecule producing the fatty acid ester of hydroxy fatty acid, which lowers ambient glycemia and improves glucose tolerance. Hence, our method can identify agricultural plant products containing valuable lipid ingredients.